Libertas Schulze-Boysen

Philipp zu Eulenburg was a close friend of Kaiser Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig and his Swedish wife, Augusta Gräfin Sandels (1853–1941).

Eulenburg and William I were allegedly lovers.

Her father was the Heidelberg-born Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye (1879–1959), couturier to the aristocracy, and her mother was noted pianist Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes Gräfin zu Eulenburg (1886–1967), Princess of Eulenberg and Hertefeld.

This allegation was published as a series of articles by influential journalist Maximilian Harden in the Berlin newspapers between 1907 and 1909.

It ran so long that it became known as the Eulenburg affair.

Libertas's parents married in Liebenberg Castle on 13 May 1909 and lived for a time in London and Paris.

They were Protestants who believed in providing a religious foundation for their children.

Despite her upbringing, Libertas never became overtly religious, although many of her early poems and later letters show Christian roots.

Her sister was Countess Ottora Maria Douglas-Reimer (1910 -2001), who married Count Carl Ludvig Douglas (1908 - 1961), a Swedish diplomat.

Libertas's older brother, (1912 - 2008), was a journalist and diplomat.

Her mother was known as "Thora"—spelled "Tora"—and came from an old Prussian noble family.

She was the youngest of the eight children of the Prussian diplomat and composer Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg and Swedish former Countess Augusta, Princess of Eulenburg.

Libertas "Libs" Schulze-Boysen, born Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye (20 November 1913, Paris – 22 December 1942, Plötzensee Prison) was a German Prussian noblewoman, who became a resistance fighter against the Nazis.

In 1921, when Libertas was eight years old, her parents divorced (unusual at the time) and her grandfather died.

Libertas spent part of her childhood at Eulenburg's country estate, Liebenberg Castle (near Berlin).

She was taught initially by a governess.

In 1922, she began attending a school in Berlin while living with her father, who headed the fashion department of the Kunstgewerbemuseum.

Later, a co-worker of her father (artist Valerie Wolffenstein) supervised her during a summer in Switzerland in 1924, where Libertas learned to draw.

Between 1926 and 1932, Schulze-Boysen was sent to be educated at boarding schools in Paris, London and Switzerland.

From the early 1930s to 1940, Schulze-Boysen attempted to build a literary career, first as a press officer and later as a writer and journalist.

Initially sympathetic to the Nazis, she changed her mind after meeting and marrying Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen.

As an aristocrat, Schulze-Boysen had contact with many different people in different strata of German society.

In 1932, Schulze-Boysen completed her Abitur at a girls' finishing school in Zurich, followed by a 9-month stay in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

After returning in January 1933, Schulze-Boysen attended a Nazi torchlight procession that marched past the Reich Chancellery.

Though not totally understanding the new and powerful German Youth Movement, she was impressed enough with them to join the Nazi Party with member number 1 551 344, in March 1933, and at the same time the League of German Girls (German: Bund Deutscher Mädel).

In May of the same year, Schulze-Boysen moved to Berlin after being hired by the motion picture company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) as a press officer.

The position consisted of writing reviews to inform the media and public about new cinematic releases.

Starting in 1935, she utilized her position to recruit left-leaning Germans into discussion groups which she hosted at her and Harro's apartment, where they sought to influence her guests.

Through these discussions, resistance to the Nazi regime grew, and by 1936, she and Harro began to actively resist the Nazis.

The couple had four children: Count Gustav Archibald Sigvart Douglas (1938–2023), a stockbroker, Princess Elisabeth Christina Douglas (b. 1940), Rosita Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (b. 1943), an artist, and their youngest son, Carl Philipp Morton, a civil engineer.

During the early 1940s, whilst working as a censor for the German Documentary Film Institute, Schulze-Boysen began to document atrocities committed by the Nazis from photographs of war crimes forwarded by soldiers of the Sonderbehandlungen task force to the Film Institute.

By 1940, the couple came into contact with other Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance groups and collaborated with them.

The most important of these was run by Arvid Harnack.

From April 1941, their underground resistance group became an espionage network that supplied military and economic intelligence to the Soviet Union.

That organisation became known as the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle") by the Abwehr.

Schulze-Boysen was fully aware of her husband's espionage activities and became one of his most active agents, working as a courier, a writer of seditious pamphlets and a recruiter for the group.

When Harro was not present she deputised as the groups leader.

When her husband was arrested in August 1942 by the Gestapo, she made a valiant attempt to destroy evidence of their work and warn other members of the group, but it was to no avail.

Schule-Boysen was arrested in September 1942, a month after her husband Harro, and both were executed on the same day in Plötzensee Prison.

Libertas Schulze-Boysen was the youngest of three children.